A fire has burned through a third of Namibia's vast Etosha national park, one of Africa’s largest game reserves. The site in the north of the largely desert country is home to 114 mammal species, notably the critically endangered black rhinoceros, and is a popular tourist attraction.
The fire, which has been burning since 22 September, has caused extensive ecological damage and razed about 34% of the park, according to the environment ministry.
After an emergency cabinet meeting, the government announced that a further 500 soldiers would be deployed to assist troops, police, local people and firefighters at the scene
Namibia deploys army to fight wildfire burning third of Etosha game reserve
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/29/2025 - 10:49
09/29/2025 - 10:00
The day I moved into my apartment, the birds appeared on the balcony. Now they sit on my arm every time I come outside
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The day I moved into my apartment I was busy negotiating boxes and these birds just appeared on the balcony. They were like a little gang. Rainbow lorikeets can be such bruisers, so it felt like it was either a welcoming committee or a protection racket. There were so many of them, I worried it might become a lorikeet version of Hitchcock’s The Birds. The previous owners must have been feeding them, so I think they were just waiting for signs of life to emerge again.
Within a couple of weeks, it became apparent there were two lorikeets who had claimed my balcony as their area. They started turning up together two or three times a day when I was working from home and on the weekend.
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Turkey argues both countries can win from drawn-out contest with Australia over Cop31 hosting rights
09/29/2025 - 10:00
Exclusive: Turkey’s climate minister says country is working on ‘innovative solutions’ as Labor privately downplays expectations impasse can be broken
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Turkey says it is pursuing “innovative solutions” in the race with Australia to host the Cop31 UN climate talks, arguing both countries can win from drawn-out negotiations over next year’s summit.
After talks with the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York last week, Turkey’s climate minister, Murat Kurum, said he was optimistic about a resolution.
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09/29/2025 - 10:00
In the worst case, entanglements could cause drowning, one expert says, but whales can also suffer long-term effects from the nets
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Scientists say a flourishing whale population that is swimming closer to shore and into the path of shark nets is contributing to the 50% increase in entanglements off Queensland’s coast this year.
Nine entanglements involving 12 whales have already occurred this year, compared with six on average, many off the Sunshine Coast. Eight whales were tangled in shark nets in 2024.
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Disasters like wildfires and floods are multiplying. US schools are training students to combat them
09/29/2025 - 06:30
From California to North Carolina, high schools and colleges are offering classes in fire science, search and rescue, and ecological sustainability
This story is from the Hechinger Report
Gavin Abundis watched as firefighter Adrian Chairez demonstrated how he uses pulleys and harnesses to rappel down buildings. “You’ve probably seen it in the movies where they’re going down Mission: Impossible style,” Chairez said with a laugh one day this past winter as he prepared to step off a tower. “We get to do that.”
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09/29/2025 - 06:00
With three years to go, experts agree that the city has set bold goals and faces steep challenges
Hosting the summer Olympics used to be a dream for many global cities, but it is now seen by many as more of a nightmare. There’s the cost of hosting – $10bn and up, in recent years – the displacement of local residents, the environmental toll, and the risk of being left, like Rio de Janeiro or Athens, with major debt and crumbling Olympic stadiums.
In the decade since Los Angeles secured its bid for the summer 2028 games, the city’s leaders have promised they will do it differently, and that Los Angeles is prepared to deliver world-class Olympics and Paralympic games in its “sunny, ideal weather”, all while keeping costs, environmental damage, and community disruption to a minimum.
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09/28/2025 - 23:00
Mercedes-Benz and other big manufacturers want to overturn the EU’s 2035 ban on petrol cars. This would be as disastrous for jobs as for the climate
There is something rather old-fashioned about the way Germany views its car industry. When the prime minister of Bavaria, Markus Söder, calls the car the destiny of Germany and the heart of its economy, and says that “without the car, collapse is imminent”, the vehicle he seems to be describing is one with a combustion engine, running on fossil fuels or their derivatives. This nostalgic attachment to the heavy-duty, polluting industries of the 20th century is now colliding with the urgent realities of the climate crisis.
Earlier this month, heads of European automotive companies gathered in the Berlaymont building, the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, for a meeting with its president, Ursula von der Leyen. German car manufacturers came with two demands: to reverse the EU ban on the manufacture of new cars with CO2-emitting combustion engines that is due to come into force in 2035, and to loosen the annual quotas they have to meet for sales of electric vehicles between now and 2035.
Tania Roettger is a journalist based in Berlin
This article was amended on 29 September 2025 to remove a potentially misleading reference to cleaner “fuels” in the final paragraph
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09/28/2025 - 08:09
Vast tract of park that is home to 114 mammal species, including critically endangered black rhino, affected
Namibia has begun deploying hundreds of soldiers to fight a fire that has burned through a third of the vast Etosha national park, one of Africa’s largest game reserves, officials said.
The park in the north of the largely desert country is home to 114 species of mammals, notably the critically endangered black rhinoceros, and is a major tourist attraction.
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09/28/2025 - 02:39
Queensland premier says he won’t protect whales ‘at the expense of one single human’
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Queensland’s premier said the state is “not for turning” on its plan to expand shark netting, and won’t put protecting whales “at the expense of one single human”.
A mother and baby humpback were discovered trapped in shark netting near Rainbow Beach on Saturday, the eighth and ninth whales to become entangled in nine days.
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09/28/2025 - 01:00
Two years after the tree was cut down, the National Trust says it wants to turn a sense of loss ‘into a sense of hope’
Artists are being asked for ideas to create a “nationally important” work from the wood of the illegally felled Sycamore Gap tree which, organisers hope, will be galvanising and inspiring.
The National Trust has revealed details of a huge creative commission, offering the chance for artists, organisations or creative agencies to use half of the tree’s timber to produce something incredible.
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